It’s not about a point system. There’s no goal post. This is not a competition at all. I am, however, quite tired. Enough that my thoughts trail off and become juxtaposed one with another, surreal, nonsensical, amusing – better than nightmares. I dislike nightmares. I still have nightmares.

I woke during the night after a nightmare. Work bullshit, less frightening than other sorts of things, still it shook me up to wake up from mocking laughter and feel so small and alone in the dark. I got up. I got up and took care of myself. Some meditation. A drink of water. A couple minutes of pleasant conversation with a friend. I didn’t get hung up on the nightmares, and returned to sleep sometime later. This happened a couple times. My sleep was of poor quality. Today, as a result, I am tired. It happens. It’s a real thing, people know about it.

I’ve spent a gentle evening of quiet, and already I have forgotten what it was I was doing… sitting? Standing. Some meditation. What else? It doesn’t matter too much. Yep. I’m tired. One lovely thing about being an adult? I totally do not care at all that it is only 9:56 pm (hell, that’s a decently adult time for bed right there. lol) – I’m tired now, so now I will sleep. That seems just fine, certainly it does no harm.

Sitting down to write in the morning, mostly exercise in making use of time while sipping coffee, I suppose. I am up both earlier than I’d ideally like, and later than usual. Late night. Concert. Good stuff.

Choices.

Today I’m on the road to see my Traveling Partner. Of the two of us, presently, I travel most. lol Mostly traveling to see my Traveling Partner, who is mostly, at present, at home. lol I’m glad to have the and the means to cover the gas money, and the car in sufficiently good condition to do so. 🙂

Last night I enjoyed a momentary return to utter chaos. I didn’t really “mean to” – that’s not how these things happen. It’s those choices. I discovered that the subwoofers I want to take down to my partner don’t fit in my car. Ouch. (I chose to have them shipped to my place instead of his, based on an early plan that he would come to my place for Giftmas.) Well damn it. So… friends? None interested in making the trip. Well, shit. Okay so… a rental? Oh! LOL Look at the price on that! Yikes. So… well, they fucking got here, didn’t they? I take time to look up the price to ship them down… Damn it. That would have been the way to go and I could have met all the available needs to have done so straight away instead of dilly-dallying with the romantic notion that I could haul them down in a mid-size sedan. LOL

Choices.

So… I schedule the shipping. The package pick up window provided to me begins promisingly early in the day. I’ve got the shipping label ready to… wait… I need to print that? Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck… no printer. Damn it. Seriously?? I’ve got evening plans (concert) – made before I accepted the invitation to go down for New Year’s, and made my own plan to depart for today – without actually thinking that through; I got home after midnight last night (and didn’t actually get to see the one performer I went to see due to changes in set times). Now I’m up again before 6 am, nursing myself back to humanity with a river of coffee (well, at least so far, really only a small creek of coffee) – and planning to drive hundreds of miles, and more than 4 hours, and on the other side? A busy celebratory holiday weekend. Omg – what have I done??? lol

Choices. I’ve made choices. 🙂

My planning is once again in tatters, but the outcomes should be more or less mostly what I’m going for – and that’s going to have to be enough, so may as well let it be enough going into it, to start things off. I’m not even mildly grumpy, at least so far. I got some sleep. I contacted Customer Service for the shipper and ensured I could squeeze in a quick trip down the street to get that label printed – I had tried to do so on my way to the concert last night, turned out that all the sorts of places that typically offer print-from-email services are closed well before 9 pm. Now, I’m confident that I can get it done before the scheduled pickup… but I’m also up 2 hours earlier than I now need to be, living on caffeine and excitement. lol Adulting is hard.

So…I’m okay right now. Merry, even. Ready to celebrate a new year – and most especially ready to let this one go. Then… with the new year behind me, life can return to its slower non-holiday-season pace for a few months, before all of it gets planned again, and the excitement builds toward the bizarre collision of spontaneity intersecting with careful planning in the last 10 days of the year. It’s a thing I know about. lol I even planned for the chaos – and thus the underlying merriment.

Lots and lots of choices. Plenty of tasty fail sauce just… everywhere, and so much more going on that I haven’t even figured out how to consider or how to discuss. lol Are you ready to begin again? I know I am…

Well shit. I begin the day with fairly grand plans for the weekend, excited about it, too. Ready for it. Yearning for it. Eager to be done with a difficult work week and eager to dive into anything at all that isn’t work. Hell, even the challenge of making a definite departure at a specific time went quite smoothly, in spite of the follow-up call I took on the drive; works questions that were somehow still not resolved… in spite of a definite sense that the issues were satisfactorily settled all around. lol Done. I am done with the work week. So done. It’ll be there for me Monday. lol

The sky seemed a homogeneous nondescript neutral gray. Not quite raining, obviously had at some point… or… maybe? Surfaces appear wet or at least somewhat damp and wet looking. Unappealing weather, not bad, not good – not inspiring. I was feeling very much that I wanted part of my weekend experience to be one of inspiration. Not feeling it. Adventure! Not feeling that either. Stillness? Contentment? Mild amusement? C’mon… what the hell, all that build up toward a great weekend and…

…I have this headache, just on the left side of my head, where something or other has been troubling me for nearly two years now, still don’t know with any certainty quite what. My acid reflux has acted up, quite probably due to unavoidable, and wholly pointless, work stress. My arthritis has flared up as temperatures drop, and I am spending my days right at the edge of what is endurable without strong Rx pain relief day-to-day. It’s hard. I do want to “just have some fun”… but…

My body seems to “get it” before my consciousness really does; I need to get some rest, take some ease, just relax. Get some real sleep. Recover a bit. Recharge – legitimately rebuild lost reserves. Not really “a party opportunity”. I adjust my thinking as the miles slip past. I review a mental to do list – what gets done, what gets postponed – what matters most? It’s not just about this moment right here, now, in spite of it also always being about this moment, right here, now, in some slightly other way – like it or not, it is also important to consider what meets my longer term needs over time. I overlook that detail, if I do, to my future detriment. I stop arguing with myself about it.

It took awhile to get here, today. At this point, I am relaxed, content, and more or less comfortable. I spend the day in pain, working, doing the things needing to be done, dodging interruptions and distractions as well as I could – some of them are my own doing, purely a product of being human, and enjoying that moment of connection with other humans. I probably need a few of those, anyway. 🙂 The commute home was routine. Nothing terrible… well… no more so than usual, and somehow less aggravating.

Today was fairly shitty. It was hard, and I hurt all day. It was hard to smile. It was an effort not to complain. It was a struggle to fight back tears, more than once. I feel awkward and graceless on my cane. I feel old to be struggling with pain, and mobility challenges. Did I mention what a shitty day it was? I was mired in it all day.

I endured. I mostly endured through successful application of a favorite very portable practice (and I’m pretty sure that this particular practice, in part, resulted in the better-than-average commute experience, just saying). It’s too simple. Please don’t laugh…

It’s hard to stay angry or be annoyed with life when I am experiencing gratitude. Just that. Feelings are tricky, though, and faking it doesn’t work. I start with things that seem obvious to appreciate – and I take a moment to appreciate them. Continue until I’m not in a bad mood. Repeat as needed. It’s not any more complicated than that, really, although it can take a bit of practice to get comfortable and easy with it; sometimes it feels like I really want to be mad about shit. That’s hard to let go of.

I start with something immediate and in-the-moment… some small comfortable detail that, by itself, isn’t crappy at all. Like… looking out the window at the office to the workers on the roof across the way; I’m not working outside in the wind and cold. Yeah, okay – I’m grateful for climate controlled indoor work, for sure. Oh, and indoor plumbing, and potable drinking water from a tap any time I want it. The rest room at the office stocks feminine hygiene supplies. I don’t need that stuff on this side of menopause, but I really appreciate that we provide such obvious basic necessities. I value the basic day-to-day courtesy and consideration of our work culture. I have a coworker who sits near me who good-naturedly lifts my spirits on the regular with light-hearted banter. I am grateful for the decency and humor of my colleagues. On it goes. I can continue to list things I am grateful for, until gratitude has filled me up entirely and I have no room for anger, irritation, or surly bullshit.

One note of caution; this is a positive thing, this gratitude thing. I find it more effective to focus on positives for that reason, so, while it is definitely worth being grateful that I don’t have malaria (and it’s amusing to say as much, in any number of contexts), it’s sort of askew from the point of the practice. More useful, perhaps, to note that I am grateful to have had anti-malarial drugs available when I did work in an area that put me at risk of getting it… an observation that tends to lead me down the path of other medical tools, practices, experiences, skills, and medications which I am grateful exist. Yay! More gratitude. That’s the thing with being grateful for the lack of something, or the negation of something else; it’s hard to build on a negative without slowly becoming more negative. Well… that’s my own experience. Your results may vary. Negativity definitely has more comedic potential, if that’s what you are going for. I just wanted to feel better, and enjoy my experience more easily while enduring so much pain.

I got home still managing my pain with little more than my positive attitude. Medication was a huge, if not immediate, relief. It’s an Rx pain reliever tonight. I feel grateful to have it available. I feel grateful that it works. I feel grateful that it ensures I can get some better quality rest (it’s hard to sleep through pain).

I woke on time this morning. I got a decent night’s rest, although I woke a couple times for no obvious reason. My coffee is tasty, and my morning routine is on track. I’m not at all certain what to write about this morning, and I don’t know where this one may lead. 🙂

(I often begin my writing with observations about my sleep or my coffee, because it gets me started writing, not because I think such observations are specifically noteworthy or actually relevant.)

Each possible not-quite-an-actual-idea-or-thought that I consider writing hits my consciousness this morning in the most contrary way. I am arguing with myself, and over some pretty picayune details. I consider not writing – I argue with myself about that, too. What the hell? “The sky is blue”, I think to myself, seeking to test a theory, and indeed, my brain scrambles to bring forward all the things I’ve ever heard or read about the sky and why it looks blue. Seriously? Live alone and avoid drama, huh? Nope. Apparently we’re hard-wired for that shit, and will try to make up bullshit to aggravate ourselves, even when we’re alone, should the right mood for it happen along. LOL

So… a day with irritable, cross, contrary me? Fuck. Not my favorite version of me, frankly. I can do better. I sip my coffee, wondering how it is almost gone, so quickly. I think over what is now a pretty robust set of self-care skills and basic practices that support my emotional wellness, and consider what I could be doing differently, right now, to make a change for the better… (it isn’t actually necessary to know why I’m cranky in order to take action to change my mood for the better).

I settle on meditation, and head for my cushion. Some time after that? There will be time for a second coffee, and a new beginning. 🙂